Flesh trade racket in Odisha’s capital city busted, 15 nabbed

The Commissionerate Police this evening busted a sex racket that had been running in three beauty parlours at the Kalpana square in Odisha’s capital city and arrested 15 persons, including 11 women for their alleged involvement in the racket.

Four teams of the Laxmisagar police station, led by the zone ACP, conducted surprise raids on the beauty parlours around 6.30 pm.

“Some of those arrested from the three parlours – Traffic Jam, U like and One Start were caught in compromising positions,” said police sources.

The police have seized, among other items, 26 mobile phones and several packets of condoms from the three parlours.

Police said all the three beauty parlours were running flesh trade business and had engaged very young women hired from West Bengal to attract customers. These women have been into prostitution for the last seven to eight years, they said.

One of the arresetd woman said she was born and brought up in Kolkata’s red light area Sonagachi and her parents are also in the same profession.

“I was in this trade for three years in Kolkata and it’s onlyin 2013 that I moved to Bhubaneswar,” she told to OST, adding, she has no regrets for having chosen this profession for a livelihood.

Twin city Commissioner of Police (CP) Dr RP Sharma said police had been receiving complaints about the flesh racket for quite some time.

” We decided to conduct a surprise raid today and nabbed 15 people including 4 customers while they were in the act. The women engaged in the racket would be sent to a government-run rescue home on Friday but the male customers and pimps would be forwarded to local court and the police would appeal to the court for stringent punishment to them,” Dr Sharma said.

The top cop, while maintaining that the drive against flesh trade will continue, warned all those involved in this illegal business in the city to quit the trade or face stringent punishment.